Susie peeped round Cesare and emerged, untouched by the raw tension holding all three adults taut. She had a teddy bear clutched in both arms. In the simmering silence she poked at the bear and it started to sing, its mouth and eyes moving. A nervous giggle convulsed Mina’s throat. But then she encountered Cesare’s hooded dark gaze and all desire to laugh was instantly banished. That look was like an ice-cold hand on her spine.
‘I’ll see you,’ she said to Steve.
‘I’m not going to bite again!’ Susie carolled, offering up her bear for admiring inspection. ‘And I said thank you! Do you know I have a granny who loves little girls?’
‘A granny…do you?’ Mina’s response was faint as she followed her daughter back out into the fresh air. For some reason she hadn’t been prepared for Cesare arriving with a present for Susie, signifying a clear desire to further their acquaintance, but she was even less prepared for hearing Susie cheerfully talking about Cesare’s mother as her grandmother.
‘Perhaps you will tell Susie who I am as soon as possible,’ Cesare suggested drily.
‘Don’t you think that would be a bit premature?’ Mina murmured, struggling to conceal her consternation.
‘Not at all, considering that the news will be coming to her three and a half years too late.’
Mina shot him a startled glance as she traversed the stile that led from the garden centre car park into the field. Cesare held her gaze with icy cold challenge and she lost colour, apprehension suddenly filling her. He had changed. And she felt that change as strongly as though he had slammed a door in her face. He was detached from her in a way that was frighteningly new to her. Finding out about Susie had done this. She had sensed that chill from the moment he first looked at her. It intimidated her.
‘Are you saying that you want to play a part in her life?’ she prompted in a strained voice, striving to imagine what her life would be like with Cesare dropping in and out of it as he pleased.
‘A permanent part.’
‘Really?’ Mina tautened, and a long silence fell.
She had expected Cesare to make some crack about the scene he had interrupted but he didn’t and she was relieved. Steve’s behaviour on its own was a sufficient worry. If he was still attracted to her, how could she work for him? Maybe he had only been reacting to the past, which had so suddenly been raked up; maybe within a few days his current response to her would melt away again…but what if it didn’t? Mina did not want to be guilty of coming between Steve and Jenny.
‘We’ll talk inside,’ Cesare decreed as he strolled into the house. He bent down as Susie tugged at his trouser leg. ‘I’ll see you later,’ he murmured with more warmth than Mina would have believed possible, considering the mood he was in.
She pushed open the door of the rarely used drawing-room. ‘I’ll make some coffee,’ she said breathlessly.
‘Forget the coffee,’ Cesare advised with grim emphasis.
As he closed the door, Mina folded her arms and wandered over to one of the sash windows. She felt cornered. He was going to offer her money towards Susie’s support. What else could he want to discuss? She found the concept unutterably humiliating but possibly she would have felt able to be less emotional and more practical had she not been in love with him, she acknowledged unhappily.
‘I won’t waste your time or mine with trivialities,’ Cesare asserted. ‘The bottom line is that I want my child.’
Mina spun back to him, her fine brows drawing together.
‘And I would prefer to get her without a fight,’ Cesare delivered in the same cool, controlled tone.
‘I don’t understand…’ Mina whispered shakily, skimming suddenly damp palms down over her thighs.
‘I can give her a great deal more than you can.’
Mina could feel the blood draining from beneath her skin, shock turning her flesh clammy.
Cold dark eyes rested on her without compassion. ‘I’m willing to legally adopt her.’
Mina licked her dry lips in a flickering motion. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘She?
?s my child and I want her——’
‘The implication being that I don’t?’ Mina gasped. ‘You’re not talking about the take-over of some company, Cesare, you’re talking about my daughter!’
‘And mine,’ he reminded her, with a flash of deep anger briefly illuminating his winter-dark gaze to pure gold. ‘But you were quite content to ignore my rights for over three years—why do you then expect me to be so much more generous when it comes to yours?’
‘I’m not talking about rights, I’m talking about feelings,’ Mina muttered unevenly, still too shaken by a development she had not foreseen even in her worst nightmares. He wanted to take Susie away from her. She couldn’t believe it, didn’t want to believe it.
‘Are you trying to say that you considered mine?’